This blog is just an archive now. My blog is now here: annrosethomas.blogspot.com
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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

RIP alchemy...

I am so bummed about etsy's decision to get rid of alchemy. They've said that it will be replaced with a 'new and improved' alchemy, but I really can't understand why it wasn't possible to leave the 'old' alchemy up in the meantime. I have gotten quite a bit of business through custom requests on etsy, and that will end, effective tomorrow.

To make matters worse, the etsy admins don't seem to have any interest in responding to the hundreds (literally) of upset responses to their announcement. This just seems like poor customer service to me, and not in keeping with etsy's general philosophy and business model. I'm a huge fan of etsy (well, obviously, with 9 shops and counting!!) and always recommend it to people, but now I'm starting to look more closely at some of the other venues out there. I haven't had any luck with Artfire but I do have a shop there, and I may start to tend it a little more carefully now. I think the people threatening to just leave etsy permanently are overreacting, but I am pretty annoyed. And disappointed.

For anyone reading this who liked to use etsy to request custom items, there is a new group etsy specifically for custom requests. Obviously it's not going to be as streamlined or simple as alchemy, but better than nothing, I suppose! It's here: Custom Requests Team